(1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a liquid droplet ejection apparatus which performs the ejection of function liquid droplet toward a workpiece such as a substrate, or the like, by means of a function liquid droplet ejection head as represented by an ink jet head. This invention relates in particular to a liquid droplet ejection apparatus which is capable of adjusting a workpiece gap between the workpiece and the function liquid droplet ejection head, a method of manufacturing an eletrooptic device, an electrooptic device, and to an electronic device.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In a conventional liquid droplet ejection apparatus such as an ink jet printer (color printer), or the like, the function liquid droplet ejection head is driven while scanning the function liquid droplet head (ink jet head) relative to an object such as paper, or the like, to which the liquid is ejected (object of ejection, or workpiece), thereby selectively ejecting the function liquid to the object of ejection to process the workpiece. At that time, in order to control the flight curve and the diameter of the fired or hit droplet at a higher accuracy, the space between the workpiece surface and the nozzle surface of the function liquid droplet ejection head, i.e., the workpiece gap (or paper gap) is controlled at a higher accuracy (see, for example, Published Unexamined Japanese Patent Application No. 162889/2001).
In the applied art in which the liquid droplet ejection apparatus is applied to the color filter and the organic electroluminescence (EL) device, there are cases in which the workpieces in the form of substrates of different sizes and thicknesses are introduced. If the liquid droplet ejection apparatus must be stopped each time in order to deal with such varying conditions, there is a problem in that the work becomes complicated and the tact time for the workpiece processing becomes ling.